


made this place for you

by from



Series: three hundred words and other stories [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, M/M, Prequel, War, not sure it should be in this collection but, pilot niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 02:38:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12695433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: niall in a basement in the great big world.





	made this place for you

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the parting line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6570814) by [from](https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from). 



After Aden, he promised his mother he’d stop tempting fate and stay well away from hotspots. But the people he wanted to help weren’t doing that, so as it turns out, he couldn’t either.

And now, hours of waiting but they’re still under fire. Worst are the mortar rounds sloppily dropping into the compound. Every hit makes the basement feel like it’s being wrung out of place.

He knows why. Above, pieces of the house are furiously pumping forward and bending back, like they’re trying to let the rage and fire pass through so they don’t have to give in.

Except sometimes they do give. Sometimes they can’t help bury the people they’re trying to shelter from the shit of this world.

Christ. His nerves are frayed and the dark feels like it’s closing in. He takes his long breaths, feeling for his old phone, the one he usually secures on the plane.

He flicks it on, thumbs through the photos. He usually doesn’t need to go so far back either, but he knows what he wants to see.

‘Is it helping?’ A voice asks from the shadows. Impressive calm for an agricultural desk officer.

He shrugs, and smiles at the small relief the hitching of his shoulders brings. At the reminder of feelings that have been with him everywhere, over the clipped bays of New Zealand, the desert in Northern Mexico, round the corners of London he and Harry have never shared together.

‘A beautiful plane,’ she says about the one in the photo, and the Aquila is that. ‘A beautiful smile.’ Harry’s smile on the tarmac in Manchester, and it is that too.

But his feelings aren’t meant to bed down here, so he only says, ‘We grew up together,’ and flicks the phone off to hold steady.

 

 

 

 

~


End file.
